HERE IS A PARTIAL STOCK of Riz Ahmed’s projects from his breakthrough year 2016:
– Two television programs, “The Night Of” and “The OA”;
– Four feature films, including the blockbusters “Star Wars: Rogue One” and “Jason Bourne”;
– One essay contributed to the best-selling book “The Good Immigrant”;
– And two important musical moments, a guest appearance on the “Hamilton” mixtape and the album “Cashmere”, released by Ahmed and rapper Heems as part of their hip-hop duo Swet Shop Boys.
It was many, for better and for worse. In December of that year, Ahmed went to Instagram for a festive flashback that sounded more than a little exhausted. “Only a year ago, for various reasons, I was not sure I would be able to do it,” he wrote. ‘I realized through many difficult moments that we have no control in this life. And it got me down, but when I saw no other way forward, I had to embrace this helplessness. ‘
Four years later, I read the caption to Ahmed, who cut it twice. ‘When did I write? that? He said. “I have no memory of it. Wow. Wow. I burned out a bit. ‘
Ahmed has always been eager to stack his plate high. “Like Ruben, I strongly trust that I am obsessively busy,” he said. A successful career as an actor requires virtually a traveling lifestyle and this naturally occurs to Ahmed, who grew up in Wembley, London, with a father who worked for the Pakistani merchant navy: ‘He was very far from home, so maybe I ‘I internalized this idea that what you as a working man should do goes out of the house and covers as much land in the world as possible. ”
Or maybe, Ahmed thinks, a child of immigrants will always feel an innate sense of wandering. “There’s a constant story of the house being somewhere else, the house is the next place you’re going to get to,” he said. ‘But if house is always the next place, you build a tent on quicksand. The job itself is perhaps the place where you can live. ”
So living there, he worked, and then worked hard, and in the process became the first Muslim and the first South Asian man to win an acting Emmy for his transformative role as an accused killer in ‘The Night Of’ . But around that time, after being pulled in so many different directions, Ahmed began to lose his center. Worse, the creative spirit that animated him felt less like a wild creature and more like a circus animal.